Where little trees have grown into city forest

Susan Wyndham

The first story I wrote for the Herald, as an aspiring cadet journalist in November 1980, was on the drought that was killing some 70-year-old trees in Centennial Park.

I cried with joy when the story was published. It clinched the job, plotted my future and deepened my bond with the 220-hectare oasis in the city's east.

January 26 will mark the 125th anniversary of Centennial Park - a ''Victorian-era park'' built on reclaimed swampland to commemorate 100 years of European settlement. A party tonight will launch a year-long program of celebrations and plans for a viable future. We can't, it seems, take our park for granted.

Like many Sydneysiders, I've been going there all my life to walk, run, picnic, exercise dogs (and bury one), canoodle, watch the wildlife or a movie, and just breathe. It is our backyard, our playground, our long horizon. Sometimes it saves my sanity.

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Last month I spent $5000 to dedicate a tree to my mother, who died last year. This, I decided, was the perfect way to remember a woman who would not think much of owning a plaque in a cemetery. Instead I chose a ''semi-mature'' Moreton Bay fig tree - a gnarled and dignified 70-year-old that overlooks Busby's Pond and throws a broad shadow for picnickers.

The plaque at its base carries my mother's words: ''What a good idea to plant all those little trees.'' They are a family joke because she first uttered them 40 years ago when a forest of pine saplings was planted in the park and repeated them every time she saw the trees, now five, 10, 20 metres tall.

Already the tree has been a salve for my grief as both a living memorial to my mother (I wish she could see it) and a way of helping ''our'' park, which desperately needs it.

We think of our parks as free open space. But Centennial Parklands, which takes in the adjoining Centennial Park, Moore Park and Queen's Park - an area larger than New York's Central Park with 15,000 trees - costs about $20 million annually to manage and maintain.

State government funding has gradually diminished so that this year the Parklands are 96 per cent self-funded and within two or three years will be totally self-funded.

The Parklands Foundation has for eight years been entrepreneurial in its fundraising, through dedications of trees (about 260 so far) and benches, family tree plantings, volunteer programs, bequests and membership. Last year the foundation contributed $500,000 to the park's upkeep. A few weeks ago it held a party to aid restoration of the sandstone Paddington Gates, built in 1888.

However, the parks are increasingly dependent on commercial activity. Income from Moore Park and the Entertainment Quarter goes into the Parklands coffers. Two years ago a proposal for the Sydney Cricket Ground to take over Moore Park raised fears for the Parklands of both lost revenues and lost land to car parking. The plan was thwarted.

The Parklands' trust has to maintain a delicate balance. It needs to make money from cafes (a new one will open in Queen's Park next year), events such as Moonlight Cinema and Parklife music festival, sporting fixtures and so on. Its main duty, though, is to give the people of Sydney the fantasy of an unspoilt wilderness.

No doubt some people think Centennial Park's beauty is already blighted by marquees and trees wearing plaques.

These are the necessary compromises and, I can attest, strengthen the park's relationship with its community. But we have to be careful.

What if they started charging us to use the park?

If 11 million annual visitors entered by a turnstile and paid just one dollar each, and if drivers paid for parking, most of the costs would be covered. Imagine the outrage.

So I suggest that if you run or cycle round the park, if you push your baby's pram beneath the fig trees on Grand Drive, if your dog likes to run through the long grass without a leash, if you enjoyed watching fluffball cygnets grow into gangly young swans this spring, then show some extra love in the 125th anniversary year.

Celebrations begin with the Light Garden (January 18-27), a light display turned on at dusk while people eat picnic dinners and watch the big sky darken above the treetops.

It's a free event but it might inspire you to make a donation, small or large, towards keeping the park alive for another 125 years.

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